The new Halo trailer hints that the backstory of the Spartans and the Master Chief has been rewritten - streamlining the Spartans' backstory and removing one major ethical issue. Excitement is building for Paramount+'s Halo TV series, which will finally introduce viewers to a live-action Master Chief. A new Halo trailer has finally given viewers a glimpse of some of the show's most dangerous villains - and, of course, the Master Chief and his AI, Cortana. The suggested changes to his story have the potential to fix previous story problems with the games.
Although Halo started out as a popular and critically-acclaimed X-Box game, it has expanded into many other mediums over the years, including some popular novels that have fleshed out the backstory of the Master Chief and the Spartans. But the TV series promises to be a completely different continuity, a deeper and more emotionally-invested exploration of Halo mythology. "The hope is you can play the game and you can have this sense of who this character is, and you can love that, and then you can stop and put that aside and enjoy this other experience and get taken on a different journey," Halo's franchise overseer Kiki Wolfkill explained when discussing the Halo timeline. "And see that character in a different way without feeling like it's impeding on the character you already have in your heart around the game."
The first Halo trailer shows a game-accurate Spartan-117, the Master Chief, played by Orange is the New Black's Pablo Schreiber, and it also introduces Natascha McElhone's Dr. Halsey, the creator of the Spartans. But subtle lines of dialogue suggest the history of the Spartan program has been streamlined for the show, potentially with some of the more disturbing ethical implications removed. Here's all you need to know about the history of the Spartans in the original canon - and the ways it's been changed for the Halo TV show.
Why The Spartans Were Created In The Halo Video Games
In the Halo video games, the Master Chief and the Spartans have become humanity's last hope against a genocidal alien Covenant. But their origin story is actually told in Eric Nyland's New York Times bestselling novel The Fall of Reach, which reveals they were initially created for a very different purpose. Humanity had expanded across the stars, with Earth retaining a tight grip on its colonies in order to prosper. This, naturally, led to an Insurrectionist movement that threatened to cause an interplanetary war, and the Spartans were commissioned to serve as front-line soldiers in that conflict. The first Spartans were volunteers from the armed forces who were put through basic surgical and cybernetic enhancement programs, but Dr. Catherine Halsey took the project one step further. She scoured the galaxy, seeking out children as young as six years old who she believed could be shaped into weapons. Spartan-117, John, was one of her most promising recruits.
The Spartan children underwent harsh training regimens, with dangerous exercises that helped them develop as a team. Once they had reached physical maturity, they were put through surgical, genetic, and cybernetic procedures to turn them into literal superhumans. They were then given experimental Mjolnir armor, so sophisticated and powerful that only a Spartan could possibly use it safely. The Spartans were turned on the Insurrectionists - humanity's greatest weapon, turned against other humans before it was ever turned against the Covenant. The program was kept top secret, largely to protect Halsey and her team from the backlash if the real origin and purpose of the Spartans were ever revealed.
How The TV Show Is Changing Master Chief's & The Spartans' Backstory
The Halo trailer hints that this backstory has been rewritten to some degree. In one shot, Dr. Halsey briefs her superiors that "the Master Chief was enhanced and trained for one purpose: to win this war." This suggests that, in the timeline of the Halo TV series, the Spartan program was not a response to the Insurrectionist threat at all; rather, it was a response to the invasion of the alien Covenant. But the trailer still hints that, as in the main Halo timeline, John and his fellow Spartans were taken as children. There's one moment where members of the Spartan squad discuss what was done to them, and the emotional numbness they feel when they think about it. The dialogue is interspersed with shots of John as a child, before he was ever taken by Dr. Halsey and became the Master Chief, making the backstory pretty clear.
This change has a striking impact on the Halo saga's backstory, because it means the conflict with the Covenant has been going on for a lot longer than in the games. In the original Halo video game canon, the Covenant launched a devastating Blitzkrieg on humanity, glassing world after world as their forces inexorably advanced. In the Halo TV show's apparent new timeline, humanity was either spread out over a larger amount of space when they first encountered the Covenant - meaning it took them longer to advance - or they put up a better fight and slowed the Covenant down. Whatever the case may be, the war between humanity and the Covenant has lasted long enough in the TV show for Spartans like John to age, undergo experimental procedures, train, and become the last defense against the Covenant.
The Halo TV Show's Changes Can Fix Issues With The Games
This altered backstory removes one of the more troubling ethical problems behind the Spartan program: the fact that Master Chief and the super-soldiers were originally created to kill humans who were fighting for freedom. Nylund's novel The Fall of Reach is well-written, successfully portraying the Spartans as heroes even as they're fighting Insurrectionists, but the question rumbles to the surface every now and again. Given the Halo TV show is exploring the Master Chief's origin, it would probably be a little too visible on the small screen, risking tarnishing the Master Chief's heroism. This approach has the further benefit of streamlining the Spartans' backstory, making it simpler and easier to present.
But that doesn't mean the Halo TV series will ignore some of the more troubling ethical questions that surround the Spartans. Just as in the original canon, the Spartans were collected as children, and subjected to horrific experiments that transformed them into super-soldiers in a process similar to the Elder Blood transformation in The Witcher. It's quite possible that, as in the novels, many of the Spartans won't survive these procedures. Wolfkill has alluded to the possibility the politics surrounding Dr. Halsey's unethical experiments will figure prominently in the show, even suggesting there'll be a political dimension akin to Game of Thrones. It makes sense for Halo to focus on the child soldier controversy, one that still allows viewers to sympathize and emphasize with the Master Chief and his cohorts, and one that should generate some pretty powerful story arcs.